Lehigh community stands in solidarity with Mohsen Mahdawi

Chants echoed by the Clayton University Center flagpole on Monday as people rallied in support of former Lehigh student Mohsen Mahdawi, who was recently arrested by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

Mahdawi, a Palestinian student at Columbia University, was detained by ICE during his citizenship appointment in Vermont on April 14. He previously attended Lehigh and expected to graduate in 2022, but he transferred to Columbia in 2021. 

The rally was organized by the Student Political Action Coalition in response to Mahdawi’s and others’ arrests by ICE. The speakers included Lehigh students, professors, friends of Mahdawi and community members who asserted the importance of justice for detained students and freedom in Palestine.

Interspersed between the speakers, the crowd chanted in support of freedom in the West Bank, Mahdawi and those who have been detained by ICE. 

“What do we want?” speakers asked throughout the rally.

“Justice,” the crowd responded.

“When do we want it?” 

“Now!”

Tommy Parisi, ‘25, one of the speakers at the rally, opened his speech by thanking attendees for standing in solidarity with Mahdawi and other political prisoners.

When referring to the political climate, he said the genocide in Gaza committed by the state of Israel has been carried out using American bombs, American tax dollars and political cover given by American politicians. 

“At least 51,000 people, including 17,000 children, have been killed,” Parisi said. “This is a vast undercount given that the medical system in Gaza is barely functional, and there are plenty of bodies under, covered and trapped under rubble. Homes and hospitals and places of worship have been systematically destroyed.” 

He said journalists, doctors and babies have been deliberately murdered, and the situation is more dire than ever due to a total blockade of food and medicine entering Gaza, which has been in effect since March 2.

Parisi said protestors speaking out against the genocide in Gaza have faced suppression from the government, universities and the media, drawing comparisons to tactics used by fascist regimes. 

He also criticized the Trump administration for undermining science, democracy and civil rights, while targeting marginalized groups and benefiting the wealthy at the expense of working people. 

Parisi said more than 1,000 students have had their visas revoked under Trump’s administration, placing them at risk of deportation. He also highlighted several students and individuals, who he said were unjustly persecuted by ICE for their political speech. 

Among them is Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian Columbia graduate who is a green card holder and permanent resident. 

According to a petition for writ of habeas corpus, Khalil was arrested with no prior notice by agents from the Department of Homeland Security on March 8 at his Columbia student housing. Agents stated he was being detained because his student visa had been revoked by the department.

The petition states Khalil showed the officers his immigration documents to demonstrate he was a lawful permanent resident, not a student visa holder, but he was arrested anyway. 

The petition also states the arrest and detention of Khalil follow the U.S. government’s oppression of student activism and political speech, specifically targeting students at Columbia for criticism of Israel’s assault on Gaza.

According to a memorandum filed by the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Khalil and other lawful permanent residents are “deportable aliens” because of their presence or activities that would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the U.S.

“The State Department is attempting to deport Kahlil, though his deportation is temporarily blocked by federal courts,” Parisi said. “And even as the government lies about Khalil, the reality is clear that he has been unjustly targeted because of ethnicity and because of his cause for peace and for Palestinian human rights.” 

In an interview with CBS Evening News, Mahdawi said a campaign calling for his deportation went viral following an antisemitic incident during one of the demonstrations that he vocally condemned. 

Parisi referenced this incident and said Mahdawi shut down a lone outsider not affiliated with the university who was shouting antisemitic insults. At the time, he said Mahdawi confronted this individual and stopped him by grabbing a megaphone to give an impromptu speech to shame him.

“In that speech, Mahdawi said to be antisemitic is unjust, and the fight for freedom of Palestine and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand, because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” he said.

At a rally organized by the Student Political Action Coalition on Monday, attendees chanted in support of Mohsen Mahdawi, who was arrested by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement on April 14. Speakers and attendees also voiced their support for freedom in the West Bank and others who have been detained by ICE. (Caitlyn Hall/B&W Staff)

Parisi also recited a poem written by Pastor Martin Niemoller in 1946 titled “First They Came.” Before reading the poem aloud, he said it served as a somber reminder of the Holocaust and how its effects are still felt to this day. 

He said the poem is a cautionary tale that instructs those living under a fascist regime how to act. 

Parisi then concluded his speech with a call to action, referencing students and individuals who have been targeted by ICE.

“Free Neri Alvarado Borges,” he said. “Free Julio Zambrano Perez. Free Jerce Reyes Barrios. Free Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Free Mahmoud Khalil. Free Rumeysa Ozturk. Free Mohsen Mahdawi. Free Palestine.” 

One of Mahdawi’s friends, Nadine Clopton, ‘19, ‘20G, then spoke at the rally. She said she is a member of both the Jewish and Lehigh Valley communities.

Clopton said she was Mahdawi’s partner for two years, and this gave her a unique perspective on his character. She described him as a bridge builder, a connector and a peacemaker, and she said throughout their relationship and beyond, she has known him to be a deeply compassionate person. 

Clopton also said her grandparents came to the U.S. in the 1970s as Jewish refugees fleeing anti-semitism in what was then the Soviet Union, and Mahdawi took immense interest and joy in learning about the lived experiences of her family.

She said he found common ground in the stories of her grandparents fleeing the Soviet Union in search for a better life. 

“They shared stories, tears, hugs, food, laughter, tequila over many nights around the dinner table, and he saw so much of his journey in that of the journey of the Jewish diaspora,” Clopton said. “To him, diaspora was one in the same.” 

She said Mahdawi loved participating in her family’s traditions and was determined to say every single prayer with her during Passover Seders, even prayers they may have skipped, and was inquisitive at every single turn.  

At the height of the pandemic, Clopton and Mahdawi were living in Vermont, and she couldn’t go home for Hanukkah that year. She said Mahdawi offered to host her family’s Hanukkah dinners, which meant the world to her, and they recited Hebrew prayers together as they lit the candles each night. 

Clopton also said when Mahdawi was a student at Lehigh, he took a Hebrew language class to improve his capacity to build bridges with Israelis in his pursuit of peace. She said he was a frequent face at Lehigh Chabad and Hillel events, where he participated in Shabbat dinners, befriended his Jewish peers and struck up a strong friendship with the campus rabbi. 

When further describing Mahdawi’s character, she said he’s a magnet for community, always hosting dinners and looking for ways to gather people to provoke thoughtful conversations.

“If someone was struggling to find their place to fit in, he’d ask them to come to our apartment for dinner or invite them to yet another campus gathering,” Clopton said. “If he met someone that he could not see eye to eye with, he’d ask them to connect over coffee, and usually he’d walk out with another friend.” 

She also said Mahdawi was never combative in the face of disagreement about worldly challenges. Instead, he views them as opportunities for deeper connections and finding common ground. 

“We’re all better off with longer tables rather than walls that separate us, and there’s a lot we can all stand to learn from them,” she said. 

Clopton said Mahdawi has been face-to-face with the violent realities of being a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank, living with settler violence, military checkpoints and raids. Because of this, she said his perspective is as firsthand as it gets. 

“His childhood and adolescence was rife with heartache, violence and pain,” she said. “He watched his best friend get shot by an Israeli soldier and killed in front of him at 10 years old, watching other close loved ones get imprisoned or killed, including his beloved uncle, having his little brother Mohammad be denied life-saving medical care that ultimately led to his death in Mohsen’s arms as a child.” 

She said due to the things Mahdawi experienced growing up in the West Bank, he has every single reason in the world to be angry and to seek revenge, but that’s not him. She said he moves from a place of love and doesn’t place a monopoly on pain. 

She said compassion is not a one-sided ordeal for him and many others in the movement to a free Palestine. She said people must be able to hold space for Jewish and Israeli pain and suffering while honoring the suffering of Palestinian people. 

“Severe, unprocessed, intergenerational trauma and grief has created walls between Israelis, the Jewish Diaspora and the Palestinian experience,” Clopton said. “It’s incumbent on all of us to do what we can to take those walls down, brick by brick, and show up to the act of building longer tables. We have to be able to feel each other’s pain if we’re ever going to get anywhere.”

An attendee holds a Palestinian flag in solidarity with Mohsen Mahdawi at a rally organized by the Student Political Action Coalition on Monday. The rally featured speeches from Lehigh students, professors, friends of Mahdawi and community members who asserted the importance of justice for detained students and freedom in Palestine. (Caitlyn Hall/B&W Staff)

She said Mahdawi condemns the mass murder of civilians in Gaza and also condemns antisemitism, because he knows Palestinian and Jewish people are deeply interconnected.

She also said someone from The New York Times called her about Mahdawi, and they told her they had no shortage of Jewish people and Israelis calling in to sing his praises. She said that, to her, spoke volumes.

“This is not someone who’s antisemitic,” she said. “This is not someone who is a terrorist or whatever they are branding him as right now. Calling for accountability and justice is not antisemitic. It’s far from it.” 

She said standing in solidarity with her Palestinian brothers and sisters in their quest for liberation is not antithetical to her Judaism. Rather, she said her Judaism is rooted in compassion because of it. 

For far too long, she said, political actors have weaponized Jewish pain and trauma to serve as both a sword and a shield while we’re grieving those lost to the horrors of war. 

“Peace activists like Mohsen should be looked to as an asset, not a threat,” Clopton said. “Peace is only made possible through understanding, and understanding can only happen through dialogue, and dialogue is made possible by people like him, who, despite their pain, keep their hearts open and are willing to reach out a hand and find common ground.”

She concluded her speech by urging people to channel their anger into action, foster meaningful dialogue even in the midst of death and destruction, and to mend and tend to the bridges between them. 

Casey Rule, ‘12, also Mahdawi’s friend, then addressed the crowd, recalling the first interaction he had with Mahdawi when they were students at Lehigh together. He said he remembered Mahdawi was hopeful to see peace between Israel and Palestine in his lifetime. 

Rule said Mahdawi’s optimism consistently stood out to him throughout their friendship, and Mahdawi always was careful not to minimize anyone’s struggles. 

Although he hadn’t seen Mahdawi in more than four years, he said he was shocked when he heard the State Department calling Mahdawi a threat to national security and when he saw hate comments online calling for his deportation.

“All of this was so completely antithetical to the pacifist Buddhist I had known,” he said.

Rule said he spent hours looking for some sort of justification for the threats and hate Mahdawi was receiving, but all he had found was support from his peers at Columbia, even those with opposing viewpoints, who called Mahdawi an empathetic person who wanted to find common ground. 

He also said the silver lining of Mahdawi’s situation, if there is any, is that this is a rare time when an instance related to the Israel-Palestine conflict has no gray area. He said this should inspire people to take action. 

“When you look into it, there is no nuance,” Rule said. “There’s no tradeoff. There’s no amount of mental gymnastics that can justify labeling Mohsen of all people as antisemitic or a threat to national security.”

He also said Mahdawi, as a person who grew up in a refugee camp in the West Bank, continually advocated for non-violence, passion and empathy toward Israeli people.

Rule said, while he might be naive, he hopes this situation will call people to action. He encouraged those not at the rally, those who disagree with Mahdawi and his politics, and those skeptical of protests to take time to think about how wrong the current situation is.

“You don’t have to know Mohsen to understand how wrong this is,” he said. “You don’t have to agree with this policy. You don’t have to be an activist. You don’t need to be pro-Palestine. You don’t have to be liberal. You don’t have to be progressive or politically engaged at all.” 

Rule said Mahdawi’s arrest has nothing to do with antisemitism. Rather, he said it is purely about chilling free speech and making people afraid of protesting. 

“Mohsen is not the first, he won’t be the last, and if we can’t draw the line here, there is no line,” he said.

Casey Rule, ‘12, a friend of Mohsen Mahdawi, addresses the crowd at a rally organized by the Student Political Action Coalition on Monday. In his speech, he recalled the first interaction he had with Mahdawi when they were students at Lehigh and said Mahdawi hoped to see peace between Israel and Palestine in his lifetime. (Caitlyn Hall/B&W Staff)

A student from Muhlenberg College, who didn’t disclose her name for safety reasons, then read a letter aloud from her best friend who lives in Gaza.

She said her friend knew about the rally at Lehigh and wanted to relay a message to those who attended.  

The letter thanked the attendees for standing up for those in Gaza and said the rally showed there are people who do not forget about those who are suffering. 

“I love you so much,” the letter said. “Now I’m alive, supporting my family after our house was destroyed 50 days ago. There is no food, no flour, nothing. We live in difficult circumstances.”

After reading the letter, the speaker then read a statement from a Kashmiri student from the University of Texas who is now in political exile as she faced the decision between returning to Indian occupied Kashmir or staying and potentially facing ICE detention.

“I refuse to be framed as a victim or a saint,” the statement read. “I must first acknowledge that the reason for my political persecution and those of others is not because we’re morally superior to others, but because the state wishes to crush any and all support for Palestine.”

The statement asserted the importance of taking action now and not waiting for the news of more students being deported. The student also encouraged the attendees to find those with similar beliefs and values to take the first step together toward a common goal. 

Allison Mickel, the director of global studies and an anthropology professor at Lehigh, then spoke. She first apologized to the crowd for having to speak again following previous rallies she’s attended to call for justice in the West Bank. 

“I am so sorry to be here again with you,” she said. “This is horrible what we are living through.” 

She then asked the crowd to attune themselves to their bodies, asking them to feel where anxiety physically sits, which she said, for her, is usually right above her stomach. 

Mickel asked the attendees if they felt the pits in their stomachs tighten as they heard the heartwarming stories about Mahdawi, to which everyone raised their hand in agreement. 

She said Mahdawi’s arrest is a test of everyone’s ability to see humanity in one another.

Mickel recalled past social movements that inspired rallying cries meant to promote unity and solidarity, including “Je suis Charlie” following an attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo and the cry “We are all Moath” after the death of Moath al-Kasasbeh, a Jordanian Air Force pilot. 

Mickel said she never liked those rallying cries, because she believes they erase individual experiences of harm and create a front of solidarity that resists critical thought.

“I don’t want to make that same mistake here, so let’s be really clear,” she said. “Mohsen was detained because he is Palestinian, because he dared to tell his stories and memories of the things he has experienced as a Palestinian, and because he refused to do nothing, as nearly 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in the last 18 months.”

Mickel said, as a Jewish person, every generation of her family has fled violence. But she said in each of the situations they fled, Jewish people were not the only ones suffering. Others similarly suffered, as she said hatred is never satisfied. 

“In Mohsen’s case, the hatred is fueled by a real fear on the part of our government of what it would mean to really have people think critically about state violence in Israel and here,” she said. 

Mickel said those who are truly aware of what is happening in Palestine can see that people’s tax dollars are supporting war, free press is influenced by corporate interests, and segregation is similarly impacting the U.S. by keeping people disconnected based on race and class. 

“That is what it means to say that none of us are free until Palestine is free,” she said. “That is what they’re so scared of, and that’s why they took Mohsen.”

Mickel then encouraged the crowd to continue taking classes, reading books and having conversations that inspire people to think about injustice or state violence. She said rallies, like the one being held, are important because they have the power to build a safe future that divests from war. 

“Detaining Mohsen is about seeing who can they carve out from our body, from our community before we start to scream,” she said. “Who are we willing to sacrifice in hopes that we won’t be next?”

The last speaker thanked the attendees for coming and encouraged them to continue to fight. They also asserted the enemy of the people is the state.

“We, as a collective force, can and will come together to stand against the face of fascism, but we cannot fight a fascist regime abroad without resistance and hope,” they said.   

They reminded the attendees of the importance of uniting behind solidarity, speaking on behalf of those who can’t and self-organizing to create a better world. They also said it’s important to listen to one’s heart in order to resist.

Following the closing remarks, the crowd came together for one final chant. 

“We want justice,” the attendees yelled. “You say, ‘How?’ Free Mohsen Mahdawi now.”